Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Jayant Pawar

13th Vidrohi Sahitya
Sammelan, Buldhana, Maharashtra

Whom to revolt against? And, how-

After elaborating so
much on the present situation, the next question is: whom to revolt against?
Well, of course, against the cultural nationalism. Because, in the end, this
kind of nationalism gives birth and nourishes fundamentalism. We have already
witnessed how Islamic nationalism eventually led to forces like Taliban and
their gruesome acts of terror. At the same time, it is amply clear how United
States supported Taliban’s activities militarily, financially and otherwise.
This simply proves our hypothesis that US sponsored capitalist nationalism and
religious- cultural revivalism, fundamentalism are not against each other.
Further, alliance of these two can very well take place over here as well.
Hence we desperately need to go beyond all symbolic protests; all tokenism and
call spade a spade- we need to revolt against this particular unholy ‘alliance’
as such.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Jayant Pawar

Jayant Pawar is a renowned story writer and dramatist in Marathi. His well known play 'Adhantar' is a tale about lives of textile workers in Mumbai in the backdrop of the failed textile strike of 1980s. He has been awarded with Sahitya Academy award in 2013 for his collection of stories 'Phoenixchya Rakhetun uthala Mor' (there arose a peacock from the ashes of Phoenix).Jayant Pawar, a journalist, currently works with Maharashtra Times. The speech was a Presidential address by him at Vidrohi Sahitya Sammelan at Buldhana, Maharashtra in January 2015. The original speech in Marathi is being translated by Rahul Vaidya and we are thankful that the speaker has kindly agreed to publish it in Vikalp.

Monday, May 4, 2015

Rahul N.

The phenomenon of female factory labourers in the
textile industries in Tamil Nadu have received sacnt attention academically.
This is startling as much attention had been focused on the dynamics of caste,
class and labour in the north-western industrial zone of Tamil Nadu symbolized
by Tiruppur and Coimbatore but comprising Erode, Dindigul, Karur
districts. This is more so startling not
only because between 2,50,000 and 4,00,000 girls are estimated to be employed
in this industry but also as this form of labour to a considerable extent
overlap with labour recruitment in garment sector which had received much of
academic interest. Rather a growing literature on the topic could be found
within the corporate social responsibility literature emanating from Europe.The
reasons for this lack of attention could be varied and could only be
speculated; a) the inaccessibility to workers at the factory/hostel site; b)
the wide dispersion of recruitment of workers spread across the state.

Editorial

How do we see the world? It is neither a gaze, nor is it to invent the predetermined truth, it is to intervene from a position. Our seeing is changing at the same time and without any claim to excavate the unadulterated truth that never existed.
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